I’ve been messing around with crypto advertising for a while now, and honestly, I still feel like half the time I’m just guessing and hoping the ads land in front of people who actually care. It’s oddly comforting to see others go through the same thing, because no matter how many tools we have, figuring out “high-intent” audiences feels like a mix of luck, timing, and way too much trial and error.
The thing that pushed me to start this thread is that I kept asking myself—why is it so hard to reach people who genuinely want what you’re offering? Not the clickers, not the curious lurkers, but the people who really mean business. In every other niche, ad targeting feels straightforward. But when it comes to crypto advertising, everything feels like it shifts every couple of months.
Pain Point
My biggest frustration was that I couldn’t tell whether I was wasting money or just being impatient. I’d run ads that got decent clicks but almost no meaningful conversions. And on the flip side, the ads that reached fewer people sometimes ended up getting better results. It felt random. I kept thinking, “Is this just how crypto ads behave?” And honestly, that uncertainty made it hard to feel confident about scaling anything.
A friend in a small crypto dev group told me I might be focusing too much on the audience size and not enough on user intent. The problem is, everyone online talks about “intent” like it’s this magic metric that solves everything. But when I actually tried to target high-intent users, I didn’t even know what signs to look for. Was it search behavior? Was it how often someone interacts with crypto content? Or was it just better filtering on my side?
Personal Test and Insight
After failing enough times, I finally forced myself to experiment slower instead of chasing big numbers. I split my campaigns into really small batches, each with a slightly different angle. Not huge changes—just little shifts in how I explained things. I also stopped going after broad crypto audiences because they’re just too mixed. Some people are in it for trading, others for NFTs, others for tech. And trying to capture them all ended up attracting almost none of them.
What helped a bit was watching how people engaged after the click. If someone left instantly, I counted that as a sign the targeting was off. If they stayed and poked around, even without converting, I took that as a signal I was closer to the right group. It made me realize high-intent is less about targeting a “crypto audience” and more about narrowing the purpose of the ad. For example, instead of aiming for “crypto users,” I tried aiming for people who specifically showed interest in tools, platforms, or tutorials related to the exact thing I was offering.
I also found it useful to pay attention to subtle patterns. Sometimes the simplest insight—like which device people used—quietly tells you where your best intent comes from. At one point I discovered that almost all my decent conversions were happening on desktop. Once I adjusted the campaigns around that, things felt a lot more predictable. Not perfect, but way less chaotic.
Soft Solution Hint
I’m definitely not claiming I cracked the formula, but being more patient with testing and watching user behavior closely has made things much clearer. And reading through smarter approaches from people who seem to understand intent better than I do helped me get past some of the guesswork. One thing that made a noticeable difference was focusing more on what happens after the click instead of just chasing lower CPCs.
If you’re in the same boat, this write-up I found breaks things down in a simple, non-salesy way. It helped me see intent from a different angle, especially the part about shaping the campaign around user behavior rather than broad targeting: Smarter ways to optimize crypto ad targeting.
Would love to hear how others here deal with this. Sometimes I wonder if we’re all just slowly piecing together the same puzzle.